The main takeaway of this whole LLM chatbot nonsense to me is how gullible people are and how low the bar is.

These tools are brand new and have proven kinks (hallucinations, for example). But instead of being, rightly, in my view, skeptical, the majority of people completely buy into the hype and already have full automation bias when it comes to these tools. They blindly trust the output, and merrily push forth AI generated, incorrect garbage that they themselves have no expertise or ability to evaluate. It's like everyone is itching to buy a bridge.

In some sense, I suppose it's only natural. Much of the modern economy sustains itself on little more than hype and snake oil anyway, so I guess it's par for the course. Still, it's left me a bit incredulous, particularly when people I thought were smart and capable of being critical seemingly adopt this nonsense without batting an eye. Worse, they all hype it up even further. Makes me feel like the whole LLM business is some kind of ponzi scheme given how willingly users will schill for these products for nothing.

For sure. I look at the shilling people do for The Next Big Thing (such as AI) and think, “if you put that much time and care into acquiring competence in something useful you wouldn’t need to be chasing internet clout along with all the other too-online people.”

> Still, it's left me a bit incredulous, particularly when people I thought were smart and capable of being critical seemingly adopt this nonsense without batting an eye.

That's the main problem, it's becoming the standard in everything.